The Teklanika is a glacially fed braided river running through Denali National Park. As the water runs down from the glaciers it carries rocks and silt down the mountainside and into the wide, stoney riverbed. The debris accumulates until the river dams itself and jumps its banks to find a new channel. This process creates the braided form of the river in which multiple streams crisscross one another in ever-shifting patterns over the span of the riverbed. Each time the melody comes to an end it begins again transposed down by a major third. Each of the four voices enters a minor sixth below, and two measures after, the initial entrance of the previous voice. I wrote this piece in one day as part of the Composing in the Wilderness 2024 program in Denali National Park. Corvus Ensemble premiered it at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in the expanded form, and for the instrumentation, given here. Corvus also performed it in this form at the visitor’s center of Denali National Park and Preserve.
